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Selling school land sparks anger at meeting

Tempers flared at a public meeting attended by more than 50 people Monday night for an update on the future of the two-acre site currently being severed and sold by the TDSB.

Area trustee Howard Goodman, who voted for the sale of the Bannockburn school land in a closed-door meeting of the board last year, came under fire from both community members and politicians.

“The school board has a fiduciary obligation to consult with the community . . . to know that there was a deficiency of park space before they decided to sever this green space,” said area MPP Mike Colle in one of several heated exchanges with Goodman. “They moved a motion to sever without consulting and without doing their homework. Anybody could have taken a walk around this park and said, ‘We can’t afford to lose it.’ ”

Community members who live around the school have been rallying for months to prevent the sale of the land, which is located in a tony North York neighbourhood near Avenue Rd. and Hwy. 401.

“Why did you not ask the community and your officials do their homework, to see that this severance was idiotic considering the deficiency of green space? Why did they proceed with the severance?” Colle asked Goodman in front of the crowd.

Goodman, in response, said the obligation of the board is, “to look after students and students alone.” Audience members continued to press Goodman, asking him why the board did not hold community consultations before deciding to offload the land.

“The board’s policy, we believe as a board, is such that we did the appropriate consultation,” said Goodman. The board held an information session in October, months after the decision was made to sever the land, but community members and leaders say there was no consultation prior to the decision.

The meeting is one of the early flashpoints in a TDSB plan to sell six closed school sites and sever land from six school playgrounds. The board voted in 2013 to sell the land to raise money for repairs and renovations to its schools. At the time of the decision, trustee Cathy Dandy raised concerns over the lack of community consultation.

Mayoral candidate and area councillor Karen Stintz vowed to help the community appeal to the Committee of Adjustment, who will discuss the severance May 14. The land is open to public-sector bidders first. Currently there is an offer from the Catholic school board, but if that doesn’t pan out, the land could be up for sale to developers.

“From my perspective it makes no sense for any public body to be selling public land. It is your land,” she told the crowd. “This is our park. It’s not just a school board field.”

Stintz brought forward a motion to city council in November for the city to express interest in purchasing the land to operate it as a park. The motion passed nearly unanimously, with only Mayor Rob Ford voting against it. The city doesn’t have the funds to buy the land outright, but Stintz hopes to strike a deal with the TDSB.

“I don’t actually know if the school board wants to work with the city on this,” said Stintz. “But I’m committed to keeping it green and I’m going to do everything I can to make that happen… If the school board was interested in keeping it green they would sell it to us at a reasonable price.”

The plot is five acres (two hectares) in total and home to a school building now being rented out to a Montessori school. The land being sold is home to Armour Heights baseball league — a league for kids from kindergarten to Grade 6 that has played there for more than 24 years.

Alyssa Berenstein helps coordinate the league and has three kids at a nearby TDSB. Given arguments of late about child obesity and health, “taking away a field where people congregate to play sports, that is in use, that shouldn’t even be on anyone’s agenda,” she said.

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